THINK BEFORE YOU BITE | MAREYA

Chalene Johnson: Yow. What is up buttercup? Thanks for tuning in!

Hey! Are you caught up? Have you listened to all the previous episodes? I'm telling you. They're just a wealth of knowledge, just sitting there in your Chalene Show feed. If you haven't subscribed, what are you waiting for? Are you kidding me? It's free. Hello? It's free? Did I mention it’s free?

Yes, it's free because we have a sponsor for the show. It's me. I'm sponsoring my own show. Yup, I swear.

I get offers every single week probably ten or more. People who say I want to advertise on your show, you're definitely reaching our demographic, would you pitch this, would you pitch that, and you know what? I just would rather talk to you about the thing that I believe makes the biggest difference in people's lives and that's confidence.

So, this episode of the Chalene Show is sponsored by me and I'd like to invite you to check out the Courageous Confidence club. It's my online coaching program to help you get the most out of life. If confidence is one thing you know you could use a little bit more of, this is the program for you. Please support the show by visiting courageousconfidenceclub.com because I would love to work with you.

Jeffrey: Welcome the Chalene Show. Chalene has helped thousands with her books, seminars and online academies. She's the author of the New York Time’s best-selling book 'Push' and a mother of two.

Chalene: All right. So you don't have to listen to this episode if you only eat things from a box but if you prefer to eat whole foods, you love fruits and vegetables, fish, poultry, if you enjoy those things--you need to listen to this episode because it could save your life. It's up to us to educate ourselves. We can't be at the mercy of our government or any regulations or lack thereof when it comes to the safety of our food and that's why I bring to you today someone who's very passionate about saving lives

and educating the public, helping us to understand what it is we're consuming and how unsafe some fruits and vegetables, chicken and poultry can be. Not just unsafe, deadly.

Today, you'll hear from my friend Chef Mareya. She's the inventor of a private called Eat Cleaner. It is revolutionizing the way that we clean our fruits and vegetables. There's tons of fruit sprays out there on the market. Eat Cleaner is organic and all natural. I love the story of how she created this with her father who's the scientist and environmental health scientist who's lifelong pursuit has been challenging government agencies to strengthen their foods safety procedures.

Mareya is known as the “Fit Foodie”. She's been on countless national TV programs. She’s nationally recognized as a food safety and clean eating expert. She's an award winning entrepreneur, a television chef, an author, an inventor, she's just so cool. I'm proud to be able to call Mareya, a dear friend of mine. I'm so proud of the work that she does. I mean she’s making a difference in our world but here's what I want you to do know about her. I want you to hear what she’s about to teach you but I also want you to be inspired by her.

She started this business from scratch and there's been many times when she’s almost threw in the towel, didn't know how to going to make ends to meet, didn't know how they're going to produce the demand that they have for their product without taking out huge loans or giving big investors or going on short tank. Girlfriend just does it.

She's got two young kids, she pulls herself up by the bootstraps, she makes it happen, I want you to not only learn from this episode but to be inspired by her. I hope that you’ll visit her website, I hope you become one of her lifers and I know she’s got big plans to help thousands and thousands of people and I hope that we can help her do that.

[START OF THE INTERVIEW]

Chalene: Mareya, it's Chalene. How are you?

Mareya: Good, how are you?

Chalene: I'm fantastic. I'm really excited to be able to share your message with people today. I think of this as a public service announcement.

Mareya: It's so true.

Chalene: It's a pretty serious deal. I just think it's ironic that we're good friends. I don't know where my life would be right now if I hadn't learned about Eat Cleaner. It is a part of my daily routine, my family's daily routine, it's something that I'm firmly and strongly believe in. I can't believe it's not in everybody's home and household and hopefully after this episode, everyone will understand that this is something you have to do if you care about your family and their health.

Mareya: Yes, thank you for that Chalene and we really want to help educate people because I think a lot of it is just not knowing. Thank you for this platform to be able to educate your followers too.

Chalene: That's the truth. Every time I talk to you, my jaw drops. I’m like, “What! No way!” Even just the chat we had before we started recording today, you've shared with me a couple of stories because it's in a news again today. There's this huge out breaking California. I shouldn't say huge but a very deadly outbreak of listeria that they've traced back to apples from a producer who covers them in caramel and then sells them to the public but they were never washed properly.

Mareya: Correct. And you know what? Believe it or not, there's another apple outbreak that's nationwide on Granny Smith Apples. You really have to think about where your food is coming from and how it's been handled.

It travels so far. It's waxed. It's sprayed, it’s touched by over twenty different sets of hands and your potential to get something that's tainted nowadays, it seems like there's an outbreak almost every month, every week.

Chalene: Two things. Number one. Is it true that organic fruits and vegetables are also often waxed?

Mareya: Yes. Let's talk about wax because a lot of people may not know this. About 80% of our produce of our fruits and vegetables are waxed. That wax is Carnauba or Paraffin wax. Carnauba wax is often used in car wax and they add in fungicides and other chemicals to help stabilize that wax on a produce.

First of all, you don't want to be eating that. Second of all, it helps to trap all of that pesticide residue and bacteria under the surface and if you've ever tried to wash away wax with water, you know it just doesn't work.

Chalene: Why are they waxing the fruits and vegetables?

Mareya: The wax helps the produce to last longer. On average, your produce travels about 1500 miles. It's coming from all over the world. A lot of our produce is grown outside of the United States and if they don't wax it’s going to go bad before it even gets to your store.

The wax is meant to help to extend shelf life. The problem with that is that you don't know what's under the surface and even organic produce, back to your question is now starting to get waxed more because we are growing an organic produce in a larger scale and they have the same problems. Sometimes with the organic tend to go bad even faster.

So you will see that wax pumping up and you want to get rid of that without having to peel it because the peel contains a lot of fiber and essential nutrients that you don't necessarily don't want to get rid of.

Chalene: Is the other reason why there waxing is because it just looks more appealing? Does it make the produce look shinier?

Mareya: It does. If you ever seen a waxed apple, it's got that glim but don't be fooled by that shine. What's under the shine is a different story.

Chalene: That's really important for people to understand and if we're buying our produce like we’re really good and we're actually going to the farmers market and buying our produce, are we then safe?

Mareya: I wish I could tell you, you are. Think of it this way. We are the last line of defense between what we buy and what we feed our families. When you go to the farmer’s market, yes, it's local and it's perhaps the carbon footprint is lower which is good from an environmental standpoint. However, when it comes to food safety and the new Food Safety Modernization Act, a lot of these farms that are smaller that are producing less financially, than maybe the larger scale farms, don't have to uphold the same level of food safety standards.

You may be getting that beautiful kale or carrots and they’re filthy, you need to wash those properly because that water rinse is not going to do anything and we have the lab results to show that.

Chalene: What about this homemade or sometimes just see them in Pinterest or even some of your competitors who are producing sprays that are supposedly to clean vegetables and fruit or the things that were making from home, how did those compare with Eat Cleaner?

Mareya: I have never seen a lab-tested homemade remedy. We spent two and a half years lab testing and proving and authenticating our recipe because I could never sell something to you and say it works without doing that. I don't know any homemade recipe that's going to that extent.

So first of all, I would say I'm skeptical if it works or not. Second of all, we decided to take out the alcohol, the chlorine, some of the other caustic chemicals and our competitors’ products because you just don't need them to be effective. I call it the secret sauce and ours, it helps to extend self-life. We're really shifting how people even think about cleaning. You can bring at home, wash it and put it back in your refrigerator and your produce will last to 200% longer.

Chalene: I'm going to put a link in my show notes to several videos that I've done where I feature Eat Cleaner and just for complete transparency, I’m not an affiliate for an Eat Cleaner, I just want people to find this product and understand how superior it is and it’s why I’ve created lots of videos showing people what my refrigerator looks like and how I organize it and how I make

healthy eating fast, simple and safe from my family. The food comes home, our fruits and some vegetables, our poultry everything gets washed down in cleaned with Eat Cleaner and then it goes in my refrigerator in clear glass containers so that it’s there, you can grab it, you know it’s already been cleaned, there’s no prep time, there’s no extra step, it’s appetizing, it’s beautiful, and because of Eat Cleaner, it lasts longer.

Can you share with us the statistics or maybe you haven’t them on or maybe, I don’t know, I’m putting you on the spot here and what does this cost the average person and in terms of how much it saves us in fruits and vegetables you don’t have to throw away?

Mareya: Yeah. It’s a great question because we’re all watching where our money grows. I always say that our health and our family’s health, you can’t put a price on it. I mean when you hear about stories of people getting foodborne illness and becoming debilitated paralyzed even you know hospitalize and, I hate to say it, but thus related to foodborne illness. I mean 48 million cases of foodborne illness reported last year in the United States alone. That’s a lot of foodborne illness.

Chalene: And those are just once that are reported. I mean it makes you wonder how many people are ill and they don’t know it’s foodborne.

Mareya: The sad part is that 95 percent of that could have been avoided with proper food handling. So it’s something we can really prevent but the great thing is that a product like ours is, it’s $5 a bottle and that bottle will last to you a good month, month and a half, even 2 months—it just depends on how much you eat.

So, it’s a really small investment to make in the safety of your food and the thing is most people throw away the average statistic is about $50 worth of food a month. I think that’s pretty low myself but if you think about it, the bottle offsets that’s a 10-time investment return on investment with a buy one bottle in a month.

Chalene: That’s crazy. When my daughter, Sierra, was in, I think it was 6 th

or 7th grade. They had to do this Science project and she decided to use Eat Cleaner as her and she took fru and

photographed it one that was washed with just tap water and then one that was washed with Eat Cleaner and then photographed the process of decay and it was astonishing to see how much bad the fruit look and then of course just knowing how much safer it was. So that was the fun experiment that really actually got my kids involved in process of understanding what they’re putting in their bodies.

I want to talk to our listeners about those five areas where we need to be aware that what we’re putting in our mouth, what we’re putting in our bodies even though it looks like it’s supposed to be healthy, it might not be in there, some hidden dangers there. What’s the number one hidden danger?

Mareya: I would say your number one place that you really wanted to be careful of is your own sink. You’re washing dishes, you’re doing your prep work or whatever and you want to make sure that you’re taking your produce and you’re really washing it because there could be a lot of other bacteria lurking--they say that your kitchen sink is actually there’s more bacteria there that even in your toilet.

Chalene: Wow.

Mareya: I know. It’s gross.

Chalene: Right.

Mareya: So when you wash your produce, I suggest you take a colander, chop it up or you’ve got place them in your colander and then use the Eat Cleaner spray thoroughly. Let it sit for two minutes and then rinse it in your colander. Keep it all contained. You can also usable but keep it rather than putting it to directly in your sink. Put it into something that is clean and then when you’re washing things like chicken, we have a poultry wash also. You can do the same thing. You can put it in colander bowl, spray the chicken down and then transfer it to your panner however you’re going to cook it and then, just make sure to really wash your hands thoroughly before you prep and after and if you’re using a cutting board, clean that.

You can use the Eat Cleaner by the way to clean your cutting board and your knives too. You can just spray everything down. It’s safe for you to use on your cutting board as well.

Chalene: So let’s answer, probably a question a lot of people have right now which we might have forgot to mention is: Is there anything in your product that’s not organic? What it’s made out of?

Mareya: Yeah, it’s all natural. It’s a blend of things that you would really just finding your kitchen cabinets; citric acid which is in almost all fruits and vegetables. You find it in lemons and limes, sodium citrate, sea salts, we use a food grade surfactant which is just a fancy name for an oil that helps to lift wax and any pesticide residue that’s not water soluble and then we use ascorbic acid which is vitamin C and we’re patented by the way and it took as two years to get our patent. So we’re the only patented produce washed on the market.

We took the time to formulate it right. It doesn’t change the way your food tastes or smells and it just leaves you with food that tastes like what nature intended because wax actually has a taste and it can leave a funky residue in your mouth. We call it mouthfill but it can like most make the roof of your mouth feel dry.

Chalene: Yeah and ironically, before I discovered the Eat Cleaner, I used to wash my fruits and vegetables with a vinegar and water mixture but I could still taste it, and I don’t mind vinegar but most everybody else doesn’t care for the taste of vinegar.

Mareya: Actually berries right? Your raspberries taste like vinegar.

Chalene: Really, it doesn’t have any taste whatsoever, so I really do appreciate that. What’s the number two place that we need to be careful?

Mareya: I think you also want to watch for juice bars. When you go to juice bars, I mean I love the fact that we have places now that you can find fresh raw juice. The problem is that if they’re not washing it properly, you’re getting those fresh raw pesticide residue bacteria in there too. When you cook food, you can usually get rid of most of the bacteria. If it’s raw, you can’t.

So ask your juice bar. Find out if they’re using a produce wash that will actually kill bacteria because if they’re not, you might want to rethink that process and maybe make that juice at home instead.

Chalene: Here’s the thing I want to bring to people’s attention because I was just at the juice bar the other day which I’ll remain nameless but as I was standing in line, the women in front of me asked if their produce was all organic and I thought to myself, I think the right question is to ask, has this been cleaned the right way? Have you use the product like Eat Cleaner? Because even if it’s organic, we have no idea how many hands have touched it? How many things have come in contact with that fruit and whether it’s been cleaned properly?

Mareya: Yeah and I want to tell you organic doesn’t mean that there’s no bacteria. In fact, my dad who is our co-founder and the formulator of our produce wash-- he is an environmental scientist, he’ll tell you that organic produce because of the methods that they use in composed manure and all kinds of other thing fertilizers that your risk of bacteria is even higher. So you really want to take that extra effort especially with leafy greens.

Leafy greens are the number one cause of foodborne illness and I’ll tell you, my good friend, Lisa Druxman --

Chalene: Oh, Lisa…Oh my gosh! I heard about this.

Mareya: She’s the founder of Fit4Mom Stroller Strides and she was hospitalized for foodborne illness from a kale smoothie. So she is the picture of fitness if she can get it, anybody can.

Chalene: No, I’d heard that too and now how do they know? How will they able to trace back where the bacteria came from?

Mareya: It’s a process of elimination but they were able to distrain a bacteria that she got. It linked it to the kale that was in that juice bar that she went to.

Chalene: What about when we’re going to healthy market and we’re buying cold press juices, what assurance do we have that those

fruits and vegetables have been processed in a way that’s safe for us to consume?

Mareya: It’s a great question Chalene, and you probably remember back in about ten years ago [18:59 Otwall?], almost went out of business because of a contamination in their juices.

Chalene: Ah—yeah.

Mareya: Yeah. When it comes to cold press, the owner falls back to the manufacture ultimately and if there’s a recall, they will be responsible for issuing that recall. What is our insurance? Not much. There’s not much insurance there at all. If you do happen to get a tainted bottle and they recall it and you’ve already consumed it, I have to say then, unfortunately, the recourse is all in your hands.

Chalene: Are there any standards there? Are they governed in any way?

Mareya: Sure, they are regulated. I mean I have to say, don’t feel like there’s nothing there that’s making them adhere to it. I’m just saying that any event that’s something were to happen and something word to get through, just like we found with this listeria outbreak. I mean those farms are supposed to make sure that produce is safe, that caramel covered apple, that’s supposed to be safe but it got through the system with the potential for listeria. I tell you that they've already traced five depths back to that listeria outbreak of the apples.

Chalene: Wow. It's amazing. It’s funny how a big deal isn't made of it and I don't know statistically but it seems like downplayed in the media and that's really big deal. It’s really a big deal.

Mareya: Forty-eight million cases of foodborne illness more than the flu and look at how much a flu gets.

Chalene: Right.

Mareya: It’s play. I mean they say about 125,000 related hospitalizations and 3000 deaths. Those are all statistics from the Center for Disease Control. It's out there. It's a matter of giving it a platform and for people to listen. This is not just about for people with autoimmune deficiencies or people with lower immunity like children; anybody can get sick.

Chalene: Yeah.

[Commercial]

Chalene: Hey guys! Just a little side note here. What do you think it takes to do what Mareya's done like to follow your passion? What does Mareya have that other people might not have? I can tell you one thing from personal experience. Mareya has confidence. That doesn't mean she doesn't have fear. It means she has the courage to overcome her fear.

It takes courage to believe in yourself to pitch her idea, to deal with rejection, to stand up to food producers, to take on a mission like this. She had the confidence she needed to leave here corporate job and to follow this dream, to start if from scratch. That confidence catches people’s attention. You can hear the belief that she has not only in her product but in herself. It's how she's landed on countless national TV shows, gotten book deals and offers and opportunities.

Confidence is a trait. It's a quality that anyone can build. If you know that having more confidence can make all the difference in the world for you, then I invite you to check out the Courageous Confidence Club. It's my own online coaching program. I want to coach you, step by step, day by day to make the changes you need to make in order to build the courage and the confidence that you need to get the most out of life.

I want to thank you for checking it out. You can do so at courageousconfidenceclub.com. Okay, back to Mareya.

[BACK TO THE INTERVIEW]

Chalene: We need to be careful at our own kitchen sink. Number two was smoothie and juice bars. Make sure that we know how they're cleaning their produce and vegetables and fruits before we can consume them. What's number three?

Mareya: Salad bars, another place where you’re going to find raw. Just think: Bacteria loves raw food. If you're going to a salad bar, I won't name any names but a lot of them that have their produce sitting out for a long time; perhaps they're not washed properly. You want to really be aware of when they put that produce, how

often they're turning it over and if it smells funky, I got really sick at a salad bar myself and I wasn't hospitalized but I spent a good day and a half in bed. So it can definitely hit you.

Chalene: I'm thinking about my own practices at home and I feel a little bit hypocritical right now because I go to the local market where I think I’ll probably run into you a couple of times and I have this amazing, beautiful salad bar and I sure have plunked all of those fruits and vegetables and produce into one of those wax covered, brown boxes, you know what I'm talking about. Sure enough, eating it like in the car on the way home didn’t clean anything. I just assumed it's all safe but is it? Would you do that?

Mareya: You’ve got to ask the questions. Let's be educated eaters too. Don't feel embarrassed to ask how this is been washed. What are the practices that you guys are using? I just want to make sure, not being paranoid here, but I just want to make sure it's safe for my family.

Chalene: You ask it, like, the Whole Foods?

Mareya: I ask it all the time.

Chalene: What did they say? “Let's just put it out there.”

Mareya: I'll tell you the practices really vary. Some of them say even between market, some of them will say, “WE use water,” some of them will say, “We use chlorine,” some of them will say, “We use XYZ food wash.” It's really various because there are no standards per se saying what you need to use. It's just the standard is what the outcome is.

If somebody's end up getting sick and gets appetizers or gets a virus from the produce, because it's only been rinsed, the owner goes back to the store and they have to deal with all the repercussions but meanwhile, you're like throwing up or worst.

Chalene: What's your personal practice when you see a salad bar, would you do that? Would you go home and wash it? What’s your personal practice?

Mareya: Let's face it. I do have to do that sometimes and I will, sometimes, take the risk but often times, when I can, I'll buy it from the salad bar and take at home and rewash it. I do the

same thing with bag produce. I never ever eat right up of the bag. I always rewash the [inaudible 0:25:29].

Chalene: Amen.

Mareya: Yeah because most of the time, they are only using chlorinated water.

Chalene: It's crazy some of the stuff that comes off that you're like, “Whaaaaat?!”

Mareya: That’s many a little pesky critter in my bag.

Chalene: Yeah and just discoloration, it's crazy but that's good to know and I think that's just to be honest. We're not telling people 100% of the time and you certainly and nor do I want to make people paranoid but it's a calculated risk and to realize as you said that 95% of this foodborne illnesses are preventable, that's on us. That's up to us to be more cautious about what we eat and how it’s been cleaned before we consume and before we serve it up to our families.

Mareya: Definitely.

Chalene: What's your next area where we need to be cautious?

Mareya: I know this is going to bum a lot of people out but sushi. When it comes to sushi bars, you really want to make sure that they are reputable, use your online sites that you use to rate these restaurants, make sure that they have their postings, their health department postings available, so you'll know if they do that that they are A and they've had no issues because the contamination that can happen on the parasites that you can get from raw fish, it can be a real problem like a long term real problem.

Chalene: Yeah.

Mareya: So hepatitis, this is something you really want to be careful of and this is a crazy story but my son, when he was three, he was in preschool and I was dropping him off and the daycare provider there, she saw a shirt. I was going to an event and see my logo Eat Cleaner and said, “Think before you bite.” She looked at me kind of funny and she’s like, “What does that

mean?” I explain to her what I do and she started crying. I panicked. “Oh my God, what did my son do? What happen here?”

She proceeded to tell me about her daughter who was in her mid-20s who went to a restaurant, ordered a raw tuna and it was cross contaminated with raw poultry and she was a track star, picture of health. After that incident, she got a rare strain of foodborne illness and she was hospitalized and paralyzed.

Chalene: Are you kidding me?

Mareya: I am not kidding you 27 years old in a wheelchair.

Chalene: It's just seems so unthinkable.

Mareya: Every time I tell the story, I get goose bumps. You can Google it even it was a restaurant here in Dana Point called Salt Creek Grill and she won the largest lawsuit in history for foodborne illness but the problem is, does any amount of money take that back for you, take back your health, your ability to use your legs and your lifestyle, I mean, it completely changed her forever and her mommy even told me, she's like, “No amount of money will buy back the health of my daughter,” but again, one of the those things that you want to be able to enjoy your food but you got to be smart about it. You’ve got to ask the restaurant the right question because [crosstalking 0:28:35] health.

Chalene: The restaurant owners, that's where we need to step up and support those restaurant owners who are putting that information available to us on their menus like gluten free, that's great, fat free? That's great. This is appropriate for vegetarians—fantastic! I want to know how you're washing your produce, your fruits, your vegetables, your fish and your poultry because gluten might not kill me but a foodborne illness might.

Mareya: Yeah. We have a commercial grade product called Eat Safe and it’s a concentrated version of our Eat Cleaner and it’s available to restaurants and we even have a seal that they can put on their menu or on their window, outside that says, “Eat safe.” You know those restaurants are doing their due diligence to clean their produce and their seafood and poultry.

Chalene: It must feel sometimes like it’s a real uphill battle.

Mareya: It is because they see it’s an extra cost and we’re saying it’s half a penny per serving. Is that really worth scribbling over for the safety and well-being of your patrons, not to mention a better quality product that are looking better tasting. It's really a win-win for everybody because we're not saying it's a 100% insurance. I would never go out on a limb and say, "You will never get sick by using our products." I just want to make that clear but it will help to reduce your risk by 99.99%. If you're using it properly, you're doing a lot more for your health that way.

Chalene: My lifers are so smart. They're brilliant. I'm not kidding and they care about their nutrition and their family and the lives of other people. We've got one more point for them but just people don't miss it, Mareya, where can I find the Eat Cleaner?

Mareya: The best way to go is our website, eatcleaner.com. That's where you can find the largest assortment of our products. We have washes, we have wipes for when you’re on the go [crosstalk 0:30:40].

Chalene: Keep it in my purse that way if I'm going to eat some produce on the run, I've always got wipes in my car and in my purse.

Mareya: Yeah. When you're traveling, we have wash for seafood and poultry and we have our commercial grade products on there for restaurants too. That's the best place to go. Some local markets carry our products like Stater Brothers and Albertsons and Whole Foods here in Southern California. You can also go to Amazon.com.

Chalene: Wow. Awesome. So our next number five area where people really need to be aware is...

Mareya: Farmer's market.

Chalene: Really?

Mareya: Yes.

Chalene: Got you! Would it be like the safest place to buy my produce?

Mareya: Here's the deal. Markets in general, I don't want to just pick on Farmer's markets but I will say that the smaller markets don't have the same adherence to the food safety acts than other larger farms.

If there was a recall, where would you go? Where would you find that farmer's market provider, right? Unusually, it pretty filthy when you get it because it's fresh from the farm which is good but you still really need to wash it properly. Take that extra step, use that colander bowl, get into it. Do that for me and please, please, whatever you do, don't sample the produce at the market before it's washed.

Chalene: Wow. Yeah.

Mareya: Because it's a habit and I tell you not all farmer's markets are local by the way. There was one that I went to recently and their grapes were from Mexico. It doesn't mean that the farmer's market--

Chalene: How did you figure that out?

Mareya: I was like, "Where did you get your grapes from?" This is Southern California like there's no local grapes right now. Those are the grapes from Mexico. You definitely don't know that it's local and berries, grapes, greens, they are all picked and packed in the field and they are not rinsed even. Don't be sampling those, okay? If I see them, I'm going to slap your hand.

Chalene: I love it.

Mareya: But just wait till you get home from the market and wash it before you sample it.

Chalene: What can we do to help ensure that our kids are not exposed when they're having produce at school?

Mareya: Your story about Sierra coming home and taking that on and doing that project, I love it. Get your kids in the kitchen. Show them how to use it. We have a lot of videos and testimonials from moms like your listeners that have gotten their kids into the kitchen and they’ve done—that’s are their job. Their job is to clean the produce. It's safe for them to use or not handling a knife. You give them that job and they're cleaning and they'll be

able to learn and that would be something they will do. We're even educating schools.

We have our program through the California School Nutrition Association where schools are starting to use our product because they understand the requirements there. We even do programs now.

You can let us know if you want your school to do it. We'll be happy to go out there and we them wipes and we do a little presentation and we show them how to clean apples, the nutrition that they get from apples. We did one in Carpenteria a couple months ago and the kids went crazy.

So those are all programs that as a company, there's one thing that I will say about our mission and my father and I together formulating this product because it's all about the safety of our families. Whatever we can do to support that, we're happy to hear from them.

Chalene: Mareya, I just want to say that I'm so proud like every time I think about your mission and what you're doing, I get goose bumps because I know it's a long process to change our habits, that's what this is about. This is about moms and whoever is cleaning our produce and the person in your household who's feeding your family, it's habits that starts there and I know this is your passion, your purpose but I have to tell you, I honor you and I respect you and I admire you because what you're doing is saving lives.

Mareya: Thank you Chalene and I owe so much to you as being such a great coach for me and it is about just changing habit but I want to encourage people to just use this mantra. Think before you bite. Before you take that bite, just think about where could've come from and it's only two minutes away from being safer and cleaner. It's not a time extensive or expensive process.

Chalene: Not even two minutes and just the savings. I can't remember the last time I threw away my produce and I really attribute that because it got so much more shelf life. When you leave in the carton, just a couple days later, it's all covered in gray mold.

Mareya: Oh, I ate some grapes that were washed. I'm not kidding you, 21 days ago, I ate yesterday and I also took a picture. You can share with everybody but they are firm, they are beautiful, they are juicy like no problems, 21 days.

Chalene: Wow.

Mareya: Yeah.

Chalene: This has been a great episode and I hope that so many of you will share this with other mothers and fathers and the people who are in-charge of feeding the family because if we get the message out, then we can start to change these habits and when we do that, we save lives. This is what it’s really about. We want to eat healthy. It's not just buying organic or consuming more fruits and vegetables. It's making sure that what we are consuming is healthy.

So Mareya, it's been a real honor and a pleasure. Thank you for being on the Chalene Show.

Mareya: Thank you for your podcast Chalene. I'm a lifer and I love you.

Chalene: I love you too.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

Chalene: Very eye opening. I brought Mareya on the show and I really meant it when I said I wanted this to serve as a public service announcement. If you come and visit my home, if you walk into my kitchen, you will see Eat Cleaner on the counter the next to the sink and it’s been there for years. I've given away as gifts and I just believe in her product, I believe in her but I really believe that it's about educating ourselves.

Please be sure to visit her website and of course, just a multitude of ways, that you can help support the Chalene show. Number one, be sure to subscribe to the show and then leave a review on ITunes. Number two, visit our sponsor. Go to courageoursconfidenceclub.com and number three, leave me a voicemail message. You do that by going to chalenejohnson.com/podcast. That's also where you find the show notes as well as the link so you can leave me a recorded voicemail message about this episode.

Anyways, until we get a chance to spend some time together again, soon I hope, I just want you to know, I love you. I mean it and you are the bomb dot com.

[END OF RECORDING]